The present invention relates to temporary roadway safety sign support devices, known as “sign bases,” and, more particularly, to sign bases that are well suited to temporarily support roadway safety signs which warn, caution and inform approaching motorists of construction zones and sites that may require the prompt adoption of special driving precautions to ensure the safety of road workers as well as travelers and others who are in the vicinities of the zones and sites where roadway safety signs are posted. Sign bases embodying features of the invention also may be used to support signs of many other types, and are therefore multipurpose in character.
Because temporary zones of roadway construction and repair are now quite prevalent throughout the United States and Canada, and because these zones of temporary activity need to be clearly, legibly and reliably marked to warn and inform approaching roadway travelers of essential precautions to be taken, diminished speed limits to be observed, and the like, temporarily posted roadway safety signs have come to play a significant role in roadway travel.
What is meant herein by the term “roadway” includes suburban streets, avenues and boulevards; rural, county, and state roads, highways, tollways, expressways, junctions, interchanges, underpasses and overpasses; and all other types of paved and unpaved routes and route components that are used by motorized and non-motorized roadway vehicles, farm equipment and the like as well as animal-drawn buggies, wagons, carriages and equipment, including all other forms of conveyance used by persons engaged in roadway travel.
What is meant herein by the term “safety sign” includes signs used to convey messages of warning and caution, and advising of roadway detours, hazards and other noteworthy conditions, or simply conveying general information of a useful nature that is desirably brought to the attention of roadway travelers, and the like.
It is important that today's temporarily installable roadway safety sign bases be capable of being quickly and easily erected, taken down, moved between installation sites, and reinstalled time after time atop various forms of underlying ground or support surface. What is meant herein by either of the terms “ground surface” and “support surface” is any roadway or terrain surface or the like atop which a roadway safety sign or the like may need to be temporarily supported and displayed, including but not limited to surfaces that are paved, unpaved, flat, irregular, pitted, sloping, wet, dry, soft or solid, and that may exhibit combinations of these and other variable characteristics.
It is equally important that the sign bases be capable of reliably supporting and safely displaying roadway safety signs in a stable and legible manner wherever the signs need to be posted, regardless of attendant conditions of high wind and inclement weather that may bring snow, rain, sleet, coatings of ice, and the like, and regardless of such forces as may be imposed from time to time on the signs and sign bases due to the passage nearby of heavy trucks, other roadway vehicles, and the like.
Today's temporarily installable sign bases also need to be capable of adjusting the height at which they support roadway safety signs to comply with requirements that differ among state and federal jurisdictions. And, to facilitate movement between installation sites, it is important that the extensible and retractable components of today's temporarily installable sign bases be collapsible into compact forms capable of being easily loaded onto or attached to vehicles for transport, or both.
Because strained budgets have diminished the sizes of road crews, it has become increasingly important that today's sign bases used to temporarily support roadway safety signs be constructed from well engineered sets of relatively lightweight components that interact efficiently to provide stable, safe and reliable support to roadway safety signs, while also being capable of being quickly and easily erected, taken down and manipulated, as necessary, by progressively smaller road crews and, in many instances, by individual roadway workers.
Although a few proposed sign bases have been designed to be connected to and supported by hitches located at the rear of vehicles such as pickup trucks, no proposed sign bases are known that are well suited to be vehicle hitch supportable as well as ground surface supportable, so the resulting sign bases can operably support roadway safety signs not only from vehicle hitches, but also in free standing modes atop paved and unpaved ground surfaces regardless of surface irregularities and slope.
No temporarily installable sign bases are known that are designed to support roadway safety signs alternatively by connection to a vehicle hitch, or from footed legs of adjustable length that also provide a built-in capability to securely connect to a support surface by penetrating support surface portions that underlie the leg-carried feet as they rest atop the support surface.
Nor are temporarily installable multipurpose sign bases known that employ one or more “gas springs” to store energy as relatively movable mast components are retracted during the lowering of a roadway safety sign so the stored energy can be used when the relatively movable mast components are extended to assist with the raising of the roadway safety sign; or sign bases that have removably connectable wheeled dollies enabling the bases to be moved easily about on ground surfaces near installation sites.